The official press reception at the Time Warner building

Lulu works for the Oxygen network, so since she had press credentials, I called her up and asked if she wanted to go to the official press soiree at the Time-Warner mall on Columbus Circle, that’s 59th and 8th for all those of you who’re not residents of my fair city… much to my surprise she said yes. Proving once again that everyone has their price.

Now the Time-Warner center was built on the site of the Coliseum convention arena, which had closed down back in the ‘80s and just stood there empty for decades while people fought over what to do with the site. They even opened it again a number of times because it was possible that nothing would ever be built there.

But Donald Trump managed to finally get the thing built. It’s huge, and has a borders bookshop, a few dozen chi-chi stores and a very chi-chi supermarket in the basement.

…so was it the perfect place for the opening press reception? No. The mall is a mall. There are places to hang out, sure, but for the most part the halls between the stores are hall between the stores and aren’t a very good place to have buffets.

The two of us got through the security without any problems whatsoever and were met with some people dressed in orange tee shirts decorated with quaint Big Apple phraseology such as "center of the universe" or "forgeddaboutit" who served us white wine or something with vodka in it. This was a perfect place for celebrity watching. We saw Larry King and Judy Woodruff looking very stately and saw Mayor Bloomberg glad-handing those who outranked us in the cosmic pecking order.

The food wasn’t all that good. Not that is was BAD goodness knows, but the simple fact is there was nowhere to sit, the portions were TINY[glorified h'orderves] and while some of them were quite tasty, this is not anywhere as filling as it’s counterpart in Boston a month ago, or the party on the Navy pier in Chicago in ’96, or the one here in New York four years before that.

But the scenery was quite nice and booze flowed freely and all had a good time. Now for the hard part…